Heart Rate Monitor

les_steaks

Hi all,

Can anyone recommend a decent and not overly expensive heart rate monitor please (Dublin area).

Thinking of getting one for jogging, walking, high and low intensity training etc. but know very little about them and would like to get one that comes recommended.

Thanks,

Les

Downtime

I got a Polar F6 recently and I find it great. Details here

daymobrew

Aldi have a HRM on special offer tomorrow (Thurs Jan 11) for only e20.
I bought one from Lidl a few years back. Works grand.

les_steaks

Cheers for that. Think I'll head to Aldi in the morning. Definitely worth a try for 20e.

John_C

I'll second the one from Lidl. Mine works great.

eatsloads

Bought one of the HRM in Aldi, looks good. Do I need to input, date of birth weight, training zones each time I use it or does it save what I have put in? Bit confused also how to calculate High and Low alarms?

Thephantomsmask

It saves everything. If you need to change your weight in the future, press set+sel together for about 2sec until it beeps and it'll enter the original DOB and weight set up menu. Setting personal max & min isn't too important. When you press mode to get into the HRM screen you can press set to select between 3 different training zones based on percent max HR calculated from the DOB entered originally. It gives the percent values in the manuals but basically zone 1 is low to medium HR for fat burn, zone two is more for endurance/general cardio and zone 3 is high intensity. You can also select to use your personal limits from there but they really aren't too important from what l can see as the 3 calculated zones have everything covered.

eatsloads

Thats great, thanks!

rubadub

eatsloads wrote:

Bit confused also how to calculate High and Low alarms?

Google for heart rate monitor calculator heart rate range

There is a forumla related to your age showing different ranges your heart rate should be in for max fat burning. You should stay in that range, run faster if you drop too slow and slow down if you heart rate is too high.

I have a cheap argos one, works fine. There is a cheap argos one that allows a mp3 player/walkman to be attached inline so the warning is played over the music.

Thephantomsmask

I think Boru has an article about the breakdown ratio of fat/carbs at different MHR percentages on his website.

I bought one of the HRM's aldi had two years ago (still perfect, donated it to my mother) but it had a really annoying system of typing in a code based on which activity you were doing and then deciding whether you were doing it at intensity 1, 2 or 3 which sucked if you were changing from one activity to another as you had to faff about with a little booklet to set which values to stay within. With the new one, it's just a press of a button to switch between the different percentage zones.

Boru.

Thephantomsmask wrote:

I think Boru has an article about the breakdown ratio of fat/carbs at different MHR percentages on his website.

Indeed I do. You can read all about it here - http://www.isometric-training.com/heart-rate-monitor-training.html

Hope it helps.